Customer Reviews

Hell Is Upon Us: D-Day in the Pacific--Saipan to Guam, June-August 1944

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author of this worthwhile book clearly has his heart in the history of the American Civil War. He discusses the Marianas campaign, a topic about which relatively little has been written, in a short, well-researched volume. His judgments are fair and balanced and he covers both the land and sea aspects of the battle. However, he constantly draws allusions and comparisons to Civil War battles and leaders. Some of these are interesting, but the author overdoes it by mentioning the Civil War far too many times. Some lessons about the Marianas can be learned by comparisons to Fredricksburg, but the world of warfare changed a great deal since Appomattox. In addition, the work suffers from numerous typos and unusual grammatical constructions, which should have been fixed during the proofreading process. In spite of these criticisms, the author provides a good overview of a Pacific battle of enormous consequence.

I read Dr. Brooks history of the Normandy Campaign and found it informative, readable and full of insights. For over 40 years I have had an interest in the campaign in the Marianas, especially Saipan. When I learned Dr. Brooks was to publish a history of that campaign, I anticipated it.

Saipan was the first time in US MIlitary History that the Marine Corps conducted a large scale amphibious assault (by that time, the US Army had successfully conducted large scale landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy(twice) and Europe). It was the first time in History that the Marine Corps conducted a large scale ground operation. It was the first time in History that a Marine Corps General (Holland M. Smith) commanded a large scale ground operation. It was not the first time in History that the plan for a large scale ground operation did not survive first contact with the enemy. It was necessary to commit an Army Division, the 27th Infantry Division, to the ground campaign, something which HM Smith neither anticipated nor planned for. HM Smith scapegoated the 27th ID and its Commanding General, MG Ralph Smith, for what did not go according to plan on Saipan.

In the past 60+ years since Saipan, most of what has been written about the Battle has come from either Marines or authors friendly to the Marine Corps. These Marine/Marine-friendly Authors focus their writing on justifying HM Smith's treatment of the 27th ID. Often they distort the history of the battle, sometimes presenting fiction as factual history. In this context, Dr. Brooks has produced a History which is factual, readable, full of insights and thoroughly objective. For these reasons I rate it outstanding.

There are some nits to be picked, however. He does not mention Captain Ben Salomon, the third soldier of the 105th Infantry awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for heroism in the gyokusai of 7 July 1944. A Dental Corps Officer acting as a Battalion Surgeon, he died defending his aid station against the Japanese. Because of a picky application of a technicality, his award was initially denied. Then, over 50 years after the event, the award was made.

He says that MG George Griner (who succeeded MG Ralph Smith as 27th ID Commander) ordered a body count after 27th ID reduced the Death Valley/Purple Heart Ridge position. General Griner ordered the body count after the Gyokusai, in response to claims by HM Smith's headquarters as to the intensity of the Gyokusai.

He does not go into much detail describing the operations against Nafutan Point. His description of the Japanese breakout from Nafutan does not match the description given in Edmond Love's "The 27th Infantry Division in World War II"(pgs. 219-222).

He states after Marianas Campaign, the US Army would not allow the placement of Army Divisions under US Marine Corps Command. The capture of Peleliu, Yap, Ulithi, Angaur took place after the Marianas. It was carried out by III Amphibious Corps, commanded by MG Roy Geiger, which had two Divisions assigned, the 1st Marine Division and the Army's 81st Infantry Division. According to Harry Gailey's "Peleliu 1944", planners envisioned III Amphibious Corps carrying out a much larger operation and having 4 Divisions under MG Geiger's command, one Marine Division and 3 Army Infantry Divisions.`

I would criticize any author for quoting from HM Smith's "Coral and Brass". HM Smith described a number of incidents regarding the 27th ID, none of them reflecting credit upon the 27th ID. There is evidence in the historical record that HM Smith fabricated at least two of his "rembrances". I refer the reader to the account of conditions regarding Nafutan in Edmund Love's history of the 27th Infantry Division, to Harry Gailey's "Howlin' Mad Versus the Army" and specifically to footnote 28 to Chapter VI in "Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls" in the US Army in World War II Series). "Coral and Brass", in my humble opinion, is not an historical resource but an attempt on the part of HM Smith to justify questionable judgments he made on Saipan.

The nit picking and one criticism aside, I again call this work outstanding.

When I saw this book I was excited, as this campaign is overdue for a thorough study. Instead what the author provided was only the most basic overview. This is absolutely the most poorly edited printed book I have ever seen. There are several paragraphs were entire sentences are clearly missing; many places where the wrong word is used (stocking instead of stacking for example) and worse, many factual errors. The author refers to the LVT as Landing, Vessel Tank when it actaully means Landing, Vechile Tracked. He speaks of amtracs (amphibious tractors, aka LVTs) trying to land tanks at Tarawa. Any casual student of the Pacific War knows an LVT doesn't carry -- couldn't carry -- a tank. He reverses the number of U.S. dead and wounded on Tinian, etc. etc. Although the writing is sometimes good, constant references to the Civil War get very annoying. Clearly the author is more comfortable with that era. If you aren't a Civil War buff, these endless mentions will do nothing for you. If you are a Civil War historian (as I am) they get old very quickly and seem a stretch most of the time. The book barely has any maps, and the three maps it does have for Saipan, Guam and Tinian show nothing more than outlines of the islands with names for a few points. They don't even show where the landings took place. Overall this seems like a quicky effort to churn out a book and hopefully make a few bucks, written by someone who admits they are new to the story of the Pacific War. It would have made a medicore American Heritage Jr. Library book, but its a long way from a thorough, interesting or ground breaking examination of one of the key campaigns of the Pacific War.

Jeff Hunt, Curator, Admiral Nimitz National Museum of the Pacific War

I enjoyed reading this book because it provided good information regarding the Marianas Campaign. There seem to be comparatively few books written on the Marianas operations, considering its overall strategic importance in the Pacific Theater.

However, I have never read a book with as many typos and grammatical errors. I agree with previous reviewers that the Civil War military analogies are way over done. The writing style in some instances was like pulp fiction. No flowery fluff is required to convey the dangers faced and courage exihibited by these servicemen.

The frequency of errors increased in the latter portion of the book. It reminded me of my college term papers .... no time for proof reading!!!!

Just a bad book: full of solecisms, typos, possibly produced by a foreign language syntax editor. Maps as usual are few and not enlightening. With no footnotes, it's hard to figure where some of his observations originate. It reads at best like the history papers I wrote in college 40 years ago, replete with double adjectives and purple imagery. At best, a few choice quotes--"When Holland Smith's chief of staff, General Graves Erskine, arrived on the scene, Bidwell noted his reaction: "He took two steps, a long breath, and promptly and efficiently lost his breakfast before immediately returning to his car and driving rapidly off." The imagery is suited to pulp fiction-"The plucky band of pilots who chose to tempt the fates by flying perilously close to the limit of their fuel tanks were rewarded in a perverse way by edging close enough to the American fleet to be intercepted by planes from..." ", frequent simile to the American Civil War--"The commander of the Fifth Fleet had just directed a defensive materpiece not unlike General George Meade's orchestration of the Union repulse of Pickett's Charge eighty-years earlier."; the sinking of the Titanic--"Like the terrified passengers on the Titanic slowly backpedaling towards the upturning stern of the ship as the bow slid beneath the freezing Atlantic waters, 5,000 men, women, and children retreated toward the cliffs of Marpi Point simiply because there was nowhere else to go." If you enjoy making marginal notes this book is for you, otherwise, read something else

In the spring and summer of 1944, American forces were poised to strike at Japan's inner defense ring. This ring was considered the boundary line to Japan proper. Included in this boundary were the Marianas islands. These islands were considered vital to the American war effort, because bases could be built to house the new B-29 Superfortresses which could range deep into the Japanese homeland. Author Victor Brooks describes this campaign, but unfortunately, his analysis is not very good.

The battle for the Marianas began with the battle of the Philippine Sea. This was the largest carrier battle ever fought, with the Americans possessing a total of 15 carriers, while the Japanese countered with 9 of their own. However, the Americans had a huge advantage in experienced pilots and better aircraft. In the course of a couple of days, the Japanese lost over 400 aircraft and 3 irreplaceable carriers, while American losses were light. Admiral Raymond Spruance was criticized for not inflicting more damage on the enemy, but he succeeded in his primary mission of keeping the Japanese fleet away from the Saipan invasion beaches.

In the next several weeks, American forces fought bitterly against the outnumbered Japanese on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. The Japanese suffered horrific losses in these battles. Sadly, many civilians leaped to their deaths from the cliffs on northern Saipan because they felt they would be tortured by the Americans. After securing these islands, the Americans began a massive build-up and re-shaped Tinian into the largest airfield in the world at the time. Soon, massive B-29s would be winging their way to the Japanese home islands while Japanese forces would be pushed further and further back.

I rate this book as only average. Although the author does an ok job of describing the battle of the Philippine sea and the invasion of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, his constant comparisons to battles fought during the Civil War grew thin rapidly. Also, this must be one of the most poorly-edited books I've ever read. There are countless misspellings and complete omissions of words throughout the course of the book. This poor editing made the book difficult to read.

The Marianas invasion was a major turning point in the war. Japan's inner boundary had been breached and they were now at the mercy of American heavy bombers. Unfortunately, this book only does an average job of describing this vital campaign. I recommend reading about these battles in a different book.

"Hell Is upon Us" was written by Victor Brooks, currently a professor of history at my long-ago alma mater, Villanova University. The book is a thorough and detailed account of the retaking by United States marines, soldiers, sailors, and aviators of the Marianas Islands and Guam, the first American territory captured by the Japanese in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor during World War II.

The campaign for the Marianas and Guam took place during eight weeks of intense and bloody combat from mid-June to August in 1944, at the same time as allied forces were moving out from Normandy after D-Day in Europe.

Brooks takes us behind the scenes into the conference rooms with America's top military planners, Admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance and William Halsey and Marine General Holland "Howling Mad" Smith, who pushed their plan for the Central Pacific offensive in preference to General Douglas MacArthur's plan first to retake the Philippines as a prelude to conquering Japan.

We also see the planning of Japan's military commanders, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack, and General Hideki Tojo, who first targeted the United States as Japan's enemy.

For the remainder of the book, the reader slogs ashore with the American invasion forces on Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, or watches as American air and sea power dominate the Japanese forces in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

The cost of victory in this campaign was massive with 26,000 American personnel killed, wounded, and missing and 65,000 Imperial troops dead, surrendered, or in hiding after eight weeks of deadly combat. But the capture of these far-flung islands in the Pacific provided the air bases for subsequent raids by American B-29 Super Fortresses on Japan and the ultimate flight of the "Enola Gay" and its crew who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to bring World War II to its close.

Sometimes tiring in reading about the sameness of planning and execution in excruciating detail of the conquering of these vital island bases, still the book has the ring of truth and authenticity, and historian Brooks provides an eye-opening account of these battles for anyone interested in the military history of World War II.

One aspect of World War II that hasn't received a lot of press lately (if at all) is the campaign to re-take the Marianas island group by US Marines in June-August, 1944. It was a bit overshadowed by a rather large invasion taking place in Europe (France, I think), but in its own way, this series of island invasions broke open the Pacific war as much as the Normandy invasions did the European. Victor Brooks writes about this campaign in Hell is Upon Us: D-Day in the Pacific, and does a very good job with it too. Judging from other books on his resume, Brooks has a wide range of interests, with books on Normandy as well as many books on the U.S. Civil War. This is the first on the Pacific however. Only a few writing idiosyncrasies bring down what is, for the most part, a wonderful book.

Brooks begins with how the plan was developed and agreed upon, as well as the various other plans that were taken into account until the Marianas plan was finally confirmed. He details all of this in the first few chapters, giving an overview of the planning as well as the forces available to both sides. He doesn't neglect the Japanese side, giving the reader much valuable information about the planning and thought processes behind the Japanese defense, how they were willing to give up certain islands with only token resistance yet there were others that were vital to Japanese interests. Brooks devotes a chapter to the prelude to the Marianas campaign: the re-taking of the Aleutian islands off the coast of Alaska and the Marshall islands as well. These are important because, left on their own, they would present a dagger poised in the side of any thrust through the Central Pacific. Thankfully, Brooks doesn't gloss over these campaigns, but he also doesn't dwell on them too much.

The meat of the book is the invasions of three islands: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Brooks gives us an in-depth study of these attacks, with how the Japanese were arrayed, how the Marines would land and where, and the vicious fighting between the two adversaries as they struggled for over cliffs and into caves, as well as some street fighting in the few cities that were on these islands. The American commanders always kept the carnage of Tarawa in the backs of their minds, and were definitely influenced by it. Brooks' prose is clear and relatively simple, making this an ideal book for those with an interest in military history without necessarily having the background. It's definitely not dry. Each chapter that begins one of the invasions has a fairly detailed map of the island in question, so anybody who wishes to can track the progress of the assaults as Brooks describes them. I'm glad that, unlike some history books, the maps are not all stuck at the beginning (or end) of the book. This format makes it a lot easier to follow.

The prose, while being quite easy to read, fails in some places. Brooks repeats quite a few details unnecessarily, especially when he just gave such details a few pages ago. He mentions twice how Admiral Nagumo was in charge of the carrier assault force on Pearl Harbor and how he was the darling of Japan, but then fell from grace after the battle of Midway. He constantly compares the relationship between King and Admiral Nimitz to the relationship between Grant and Sherman and that between Lee and Jackson in the Civil War. In fact, he often references the Civil War in ways that I don't understand the purpose. He says that one man was born a few years after the Civil War ended rather than just giving the date by itself. These little annoyances pop up all over the book and started to get on my nerves, a problem when I'm enjoying the information that Brooks is presenting. The editing is also shoddy, with words misspelled in a lot of places (the battle of Antietam being spelled "Antirtim" at one point).

As I said, this is Brooks' first book on the Pacific War, and thus I found interesting his surprise at the numerous Banzai charges that the Japanese used, as stated in the Afterward. While the Japanese troops were going to be overwhelmed because they could not be reinforced, they could still exact a heavy toll on the Americans. However, inevitably on the first night of each invasion, Japanese commanders would send their troops on suicidal rushes of the American lines, with the intent of throwing them into the sea. Thus, huge numbers of defenders would be dead on the first night with relatively few casualties caused to the Americans. I was familiar with all of this, but it took reading about them in quick succession as I did in Hell is Upon Us to really drive home the fact that this happened so often. It may have been the "honourable" thing to do as far as they were concerned, but militarily it was a disaster.

Hell is Upon Us is definitely worth a read for anybody with an interest in the Pacific campaign. It even gives a good overview of what is commonly known as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," the last big carrier-vs-carrier battle that effectively wiped out the Japanese naval air fleet. The book is well-researched (though there are few notes) and Brooks makes the whole thing interesting. Just ignore some of the weird writing and find yourself becoming better informed.

David Roy

D-Day has come to mean one invasion, and one invasion only, the invasion of France on June 6, 1944. Little known is that there were many d-days, and just as many h-hours where American forces assaulted enemy held beaches.

On June 14, 1944, barely a week after D-Day in Europe, it was D-Day in the pacafic. This d-day was for the invasion of the Marianas. This group of islands had been chosen as the first of the stepping stones that would take American and Allied forces to Japan. The Marianas also included Guam, a piece of American territory that had been captured by the Japanese soon after Pearl Harbor. The Marianas also included Tinian, the island from which the 'Enola Gay' and 'Bock's Car' would take off to deliver atomic bombs to Japanese cities.

The Marianas campaign did not marke the end of fighting in the Pacific war, but as Churchill said about El Alamein, 'it marked the end of the beginning.' After the Marianas, the path to Japan was clear although much hard fighting remained.

This is an excellently researched book that clearly covers the invasion of the Marianas, along with the story of the Army and Marines working more or less together. It is a much needed book that covers this little recognized battle.

A welcome addition to the library of any reader of military history. I have been a huge fan of the work of Victor Brooks for about five years. His books bring the face of battle alive and Hell is upon us is no exception. It is a very exciting, readable account of an overlooked campaign. One of the most amazing parts of the book is the massive suicide charge of Japanese troops in Saipan, very relevant to the war-torn era we now live in.